Report: Alliance seeks $1 billion in car battery R&D

SAN JOSE, Calif.  Fourteen U.S. technology companies will seek $1 billion in federal aid to build a plant to make advanced lithium ion batteries for electric cars, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture would build a plant in the U.S. to make advanced lithium ion cells in an effort to catch up with work in Japan and China. Individual companies could purchase the cells to assemble them into packs for car makers, the story said.

The alliance includes 3M Corp., ActaCell Inc., EnerSys, FMC Corp., Johnson Controls and Mobius Power Inc., according to the article.

A handful of generally small companies in the U.S. are pursuing automotive batteries including A123 Systems and Boston-Power which recently struck a deal with Hewlett-Packard to use its batteries in notebooks.